Our journey- from 8 week old pup, to agility dog, school dog, and trickster. Training thoughts, tips and lots of problem solving, photography and general musings on owning a silly and serious paradoxical Aussie Shepherd.

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insight into the mind of Lu

You might not be able to tell because you don’t know her, but this is the face of a sick puppy who’d just come home and who definitely did NOT want her photo taken. So much for my joyful reunion with a happy dog!

So, my girl has been sick. On Monday morning she vomited slime with flecks of blood… so into the vet she went that afternoon, and they took her to have x-rays, hooked her up to an IV and kept her overnight. Poor girl. Tuesday I got her home, still tired, still sick, still not wanting to eat. I managed to get her to have some boiled chicken and rice because I don’t necessarily believe in feeding her their ‘prescribed diet’ food. Yuck. They basically didn’t know what was wrong with her, no obstruction, maybe some kind of gastro.

Anyway, she spent most of the night outside last night after waking me up at 2am to go out and then not wanting to come back in. I was tired and I figured she’d be up and down most of the night wanting to eat grass and poop.

This morning she’s on the road to being normal- she brought her slipper for Nic to play with, but is still pretty tired and unhappy. Tried to get her to eat this morning without a lot of success until she wanted to slam the cupboard doors in the kitchen, and then looked at us hopefully for a treat. Huh? So, we started doing really easy tricks. “Sit. Good girl! Have a chunk of boiled chicken! Drop. Good! Here’s more chicken!”

I took her outside just a minute ago and saw she was sniffing around for some chicken she’d buried earlier when she didn’t want to eat. Maybe she’s hungry! Brought her inside, start doing some tricks. Normal ones, hard ones like sit pretty to stand up to sit pretty. Treats?! She asked. Sure!, I said, have some more boiled chicken pieces!!!

And now, with a bit of food in her tummy, she’s trying to get Mal to play. I swear, she actually likes boiled chicken more than raw anything, I’m considering using it as a high-value reward. What a freak. Anyway, if making her do tricks is how I get some food in her stomach, I’m certainly not going to complain!